I don't in any way mean this as a negative against all the hard work going on at the frag workshop, but I do think the setup is pretty hard for corals. A lot of time in a holding container, which is always going to be hard to keep at temperature and clean water, and with no water moment. A lot of time on a saw. Corals asit around for awhile after all that until someone picks theirs up and bags it, with water of unknown temp. Everyone for good reason socializing and leaving things in their coolers or whatever. After all that someone drives it home, probably without a heating pad. Finally tossed into a new tank, maybe preceded by another dip out of paranoia.
Frag swaps are pretty similar, except hopefully the coral was fragged awhile before. Might sit even longer though at room temperature, and definitely should be getting dipped before added to people's tank.
It's all a great example of the fact that corals are a lot hardier than we all think they are, since most of those things individually people assume would kill the coral. My frags from the event are currently all doing well, I think, for example.
I say all that knowing I don't have a great solution to it. Maybe one thing could be the club could put together a frag event equipment pack. Get a couple heaters, a couple cheap temp controllers to make sure they hold the target temp after getting moved around, some cheap power heads (maybe donations from the group), and a couple shallow troughs/Rubbermaids/containers. With that at least the temp part could be stable. I know Costco has big packs of hand warmers, but not sure how warm those actually get (I used one recently for a coral but I microwaved it quickly). Hopefully with some donations it could get together cheap.
Main problem would be making sure all that stuff gets to the actual events, which requires someone to store and deliver it though.
Again, not a critique, it's a tricky problem. Especially when there's so generous a situation as a giant donor coral set, which is rare.